That doesn’t answer the overall question, but I think the answer is that ‘it works’. A lot of people asked why Apple had gone with KHTML over Mozilla and shouldn’t they be putting their weight behind making Firefox rival IE, etc, but I think these days we’re all seeing the benefits of having three standards compliant browser engines competing with each other.

The Acid3 competition was cool, and the new focus on JavaScript performance is equally positive.

>Apple could have used Google’s V8, why don’t they do it?
The first version of Squirrelfish came out before V8 was publicly announced, while Extreme has been released 10 days later. You’re not simply going to replace your VM because something offers a temporary advantage for a few days. I’ve not paid enough attention to be able to see what the fundamental differences between the two are.

I’m presuming V8 was something Google backed some time ago when Apple/WebKit’s hadn’t made any public indication of direction with JavaScript (which until recently seemed to be neglected compared to CSS3 and HTML5). I did look around the time Tamarin was donated to Mozilla to see what the WebKit reaction was, but not a lot.

>What (hidden) interests are at stake?
At a hunch – Google want the ability to tune the JavaScript engine to work well with their web apps. They know what language features they use heavily, so could modify the runtime to support them well, just as Apple could optimise to make Sproutcore based apps run better. I’m guessing Google also see V8 as being good for Android??

“[WebKit] could have used Google’s V8, why don’t they do it?”
— Chrome just came out, and it’s only for Windows right now so WebKit hasn’t had much time to sift through V8 yet. But since SquirrelFish Extreme easily trumps Chrome’s V8 there isn’t a reason for WebKit to drop a better system. Even if it bested SFE there still would be no reason for Webkit to adopt it unless the lead was severe and SFE couldn’t be made faster.

“In what ways is Google’s Chrome pushing up competition and forcing Apple to react? (or the other way around?)”
— Google entering the browser market with WebKit is great for Apple and WebKit. While web developers can easily dismiss Apple’s Safari as being an elitist browser on an elitist OS, they can’t ignore Google. While Apple’s growth in the both the PC and smartphone markets would have eventually forced web developers to consider WebKit, Chromes foray will speed up this inevitable transition considerably, as well as force MS to get IE even more standards compliant faster.

“What (hidden) interests are at stake?”
— I see no hidden interests in the aspects of V8, but Google obviously wants to have a browser since its entire business model is browser based. If you use Google to do a search they are no longer paying Mozilla or Safari for those in-browser searches, but that is probably chump change to Google. I think Google may be using this as an initial test for their dumb terminal, internet boxes that Cringely talked about so many years ago.

Why do open source platforms compete instead of cooperate?

Apple could have used Google’s V8, why don’t they do it?

In what ways is Google’s Chrome pushing up competition and forcing Apple to react? (or the other way around?)

What (hidden) interests are at stake?